


Breath+Hands

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sexual Harassment, Strangulation, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 22:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18822064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: Please, Jack, hurry.Mac’s mind is already doing the calculations. He has six minutes...well, probably five now. He tries to pull the man’s hands away, but his movements are uncoordinated and this guy feels like his arms are pure steel. And the more he fights, the faster he’s going to run out of oxygen, the less time he has.





	Breath+Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [just_another_outcast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_outcast/gifts).



_ I can’t breathe. _ Mac thrashes against the hands pinning him to the wall, but he’s already tired and dehydrated and out of breath from chasing this guy. He kicks out, but the man only laughs, and the grip on his neck gets tighter. Hands that wrap almost all the way around his throat, stopping any wisp of air from getting past.

He wonders where Jack is; he was complaining about having to run after this guy again, saying he’s getting too old for this.  _ Not really his fault, getting hit by a car will kind of mess you up. _ Jack shouldn’t even be here but he insisted on having Mac’s back. And Mac ran ahead, trying not to lose their mark.  _ Well, I didn’t lose him, but now I kind of wish I had.  _

_ Please, Jack, hurry. _ Mac’s mind is already doing the calculations. He has six minutes...well, probably five now. He’s had worse...right? He tries to pull the man’s hands away, but his movements are uncoordinated and this guy feels like his arms are pure steel. And the more he fights, the faster he’s going to run out of oxygen, the less time he has. 

_ Jack, where is Jack? _ He knows he didn’t even have time to yell before this guy pinned him to the wall, Jack doesn’t know he’s in trouble, and he won’t know which of the buildings to check. It was just Mac’s terrible luck that he did see this guy going into the last one on the right.

Granted, when Mac doesn’t answer on comms Jack’s going to freak out and start looking for him, but what if it takes too long? He knows the science behind hypoxia, how long it takes brain cells to start to die, and it scares him.  _ What if this is the time my luck runs out? _ He’s lost count of the times he’s nearly drowned, or been waterboarded, or forced to breathe in poisonous gases. But every time he’s been brought back before he got any permanent brain damage. 

The thought makes him claw at the man’s arms even more desperately, but despite the red, gouged lines, he doesn’t let go. He can’t decide if it’s better to keep fighting or to try to conserve oxygen, to hold out as long as he can and pray Jack comes for him. 

_ I have to get away, I have to breathe, I can’t let him do this to me. _ What good is he to anyone if he can’t do the one thing that makes him useful? His hands and his brain are his most valuable assets, and someone damaging either of them is unthinkable. 

He’s still clawing and kicking, but he knows it’s not doing any good. He’s weak and he can’t breathe or think and he’s going to black out any second. The world is hazy and he can’t hear, there’s a dim roaring in his ears. He can’t see or think or  _ breathe. _

And then there’s a loud crash, and he thinks Jack is yelling, maybe, and then the hands let go and he falls to the floor, coughing and clutching at his aching throat. Jack kneels down beside him and Mac wants to tell him he’s okay, but he can’t speak, and then everything really does go black. 

* * *

Mac throws himself upright, grabbing at his neck and gasping, dragging in painfully rasping breaths.  _ Just another nightmare.  _ He tries to slow his racing heart, it feels like he’s not getting enough air and that terrifies him. Every breath is painful, almost as bad as swallowing.

“Hey, kiddo, you okay?” Jack asks. Mac just nods.  _ It was just another nightmare. _ He doesn’t feel like talking, that hurts too much. He lies back against the pillows that he’s carefully arranged to put as little pressure on his neck as possible. 

He hasn’t been sleeping much the past few days. His neck hurts, and when he’s too exhausted for that to matter anymore, the nightmares hit. Sometimes, like tonight, it’s just the reality of what happened on that last mission. But other times, it’s so much worse.

_ Sometimes, I wake up to find out that there was irreversible brain damage. Sometimes, I can’t speak and I can’t defend myself when James says that that means I’m no longer an asset to the Phoenix. Sometimes I don’t wake up at all.  _

Jack settles back into his chair, sighing. “You need anything?” Shaking his head is too painful, so he opts for signing “no” instead. Knowing ASL comes in handy fairly often. He just wishes this wasn’t one of those times. 

He takes a few shallow breaths, hoping he’ll be able to drift off quietly for at least a little while. He’s so tired all the time. He wants to sleep, but it hurts and he has those terrible dreams. His shoulders are shaking, but crying hurts and he doesn’t want to cry again. He swallows hard, but that hurts too. 

“Kiddo?” Jack asks, sitting up. “You gonna be alright?” 

Mac doesn’t know. And Jack takes his lack of response exactly the way Mac meant it. He sits down on the edge of the bed and rests a hand on Mac’s shoulder, gently. “I’m not gonna let anyone hurt you, Mac. You can go to sleep. I’ll be right here.” 

* * *

Mac blinks awake. Jack’s leaning down on the side of the bed, snoring like a chainsaw. Mac didn’t wake him up again, even though he woke up twice more from nightmares. His nightmares were less terrifying, subconsciously he’s aware of Jack’s presence and even in the worst dreams he knows that Jack will be right there to protect him.

He gets up slowly, trying to move his head and neck as little as possible. Not only are the bruises painful, but there’s some muscle strain from both the angle he was being held at and his frantic struggles to free himself. His whole neck hurts and he cringes when he bends over the sink to brush his teeth.

He avoids lifting his head to face his reflection. He won’t want to see it later, either, but there’s nothing covering the marks at the moment. Bozer does the best he can, with the stage makeup he has left over from his days of dreaming about being a filmmaker, but nothing can really disguise the black and purple handprints. Mac hates looking in the mirror and seeing them there. And he hates the looks of pity from his team, and helpless grief from Jack.  _ He blames himself for not being able to get to me sooner.  _ Mac hates being the object of anyone’s pity, and now those ugly bruises make  _ everyone _ pity him. 

No matter how far up he buttons his collars, the marks still show. And if he does button them that high, the cloth feels tight and constricting against his throat, and turtlenecks present the same problem. He has to weigh the options of what’s better, having people be able to see the bruises on his throat, or risking suddenly having a panic attack because of the sensation of something pressing against his neck. 

He sighs, resting a cool washcloth against his neck and enjoying the momentary relief. He just wants this to be over, so he can go back to normal. The sooner the better. 

* * *

He’s putting a container of yogurt (he ran out of things that were soft and easy to swallow in the house) in his cart when he hears the footsteps beside him. He flinches instinctively, turning to stare down at a small girl with her black hair in a ponytail and her big brown eyes wide with curiosity and concern.

“What happened to your neck?” 

Mac bites his lip.  _ It’s bad enough having to come up with excuses for grownups. How do I explain it to a kid? _ There’s no good explanation for hand-shaped bruises, he tries to tell people it was a mugging that went bad but he knows most of them don’t buy it. One woman slipped him a card for a domestic violence hotline when she walked past him in the aisle. It made him shiver when he actually looked at it. The thought that some people live with cruelty like this on a daily basis, and end up making excuse after excuse for it, is devastating.  _ I guess I’m lucky. _

He knew this was a mistake. But the rest of the team is in Latvia on an op, he couldn’t just ask Jack or Bozer to go, and it’s his own fault for not keeping better track of what they had in the fridge. He’d honestly really debated whether it was worth going out in public. The bruises are starting to fade now, but they’re still brutally visible, and Mac is nowhere near as skilled with concealer as Bozer. 

“I…” He stops, what is he going to say? He’s almost grateful when the girl’s mother rushes up and drags her away, even though she’s looking at him with judgmental eyes and he’s pretty sure he heard her tell her daughter to stay away from people like that. 

He finishes the rest of his grocery shopping as fast as possible, and he can’t look the woman at the checkout line in the eyes when she asks him if he’s okay and whispers that if he doesn’t want to go home she knows people who can help. Next time he’s going to find somewhere with a self-scanner, and he kicks himself for not driving the extra twenty minutes to the place he knows does have one. He just wants to go home and not come out again until the bruises are gone completely. 

* * *

He’s headed back to his car, passing the little corner where the employees go to smoke on their breaks, when someone whistles. Mac shudders and walks a little faster. That’s worse than the stares, worse than hearing the shocked gasps.

“Hey, pretty thing,” The voice is slurred, drunk or drugged, and Mac shivers.  _ I really should have known better than to stop at this place. _ He’s never paid much attention to the junkies who hang around asking for money, or the people who go outside and immediately down half the case of beer they just bought. “Where’d you get that collar, huh?”

He tries to ignore them, but now that he’s heard them talking he can’t stop hearing them. He’s scared to bend over to put the bags into his Jeep, afraid one of them will come up behind him. He hopes it’s only talk, he just wants to get out of here. 

He puts groceries into the car the best he can with one hand, leaving the other one free just in case, he’s not going to be caught unable to defend himself. 

He looks up when a shadow falls over him, ignoring the screaming pain in his neck muscles at the sudden movement. “What are you running away for, huh?” someone asks, and Mac can’t see him because he’s standing in the sun, but he can smell the beer and faint traces of marijuana. “Walk around showing that off, you’re just asking for attention, aren’t you?” The man laughs. “You don’t belong to someone, or they sure don’t have any interest in keeping you to themselves, letting you outside looking like that.” 

Mac shudders. He backs his way toward the driver’s door, leaving the last bag of groceries in the cart. He pulls out his key with shaky fingers, and when the man takes a step closer, he jumps behind the cart and shoves it into the guy’s legs as hard as he can. The man grunts and stumbles backward, and Mac leaps into the driver’s seat, locks the doors, and leans on the steering wheel, panting.

When he pulls out, the cart, still in the awkward sideways spot it ended up after he slammed it into that man, leaves a deep gouged scrape down the side of the Jeep’s rusty-red paint. He doesn’t notice until he gets home, and he can’t bring himself to care. 

* * *

_ Mac thrashes against the hands clenched around his throat. They’re not quite as big, not as brawny, as the last set. They’re cold and pale and somehow far more terrifying. Because Mac knows the owner of those hands doesn’t intend to kill him. No, it’s going to be much, much worse. _

_ He kicks and struggles, but that makes his neck hurt even more, sharp lines of agony shooting up the damaged muscles and the bruises flaring with pain. He twists his hands around Murdoc’s and pulls, but he can’t get them to give at all. He gasps for Jack, but the sound won’t come out of his throat.  _

_ Murdoc laughs, a chilling sound in the empty, cold room. “There’s no point in screaming for Jack. He’s not going to find us.” He leans in closer, and Mac cringes at the way the psychopath’s body presses against his, at the unmistakable want in every single one of Murdoc’s actions.  _

_ “Go ahead and struggle all you want. It’s so satisfying watching you writhe under my hands.” Mac shudders at the insinuation. “Don’t worry, I think you’ll find what comes next is going to be fun for you too...well, if you want it to be.” _

“Jack!” Mac screams, sitting bolt upright, panting. There’s a hand on his chest and he shoves it away, gasping.  _ Don’t touch me, get off me, go away! _

“Whoa, hoss, it’s just me.” Jack’s voice is a soothing rumble, and Mac takes a deep, shuddery breath. “Hey, easy, easy. It’s okay.” Mac is glad Jack’s home from the mission, glad he doesn’t have to be alone tonight or worse yet, confess this to Bozer. 

“Sorry,” he chokes out.

“Nothin’ to be sorry for, kiddo.” Jack sighs. Mac sighs, leaning back against the pillows. He doesn’t want to close his eyes again, but he also doesn’t want to tell Jack about this. About any of it.  _ Nothing happened. You’re okay. No reason to freak out.  _ “Man, you look...well, you haven’t looked that great all week, but you look worse than normal.”

“Thank you for that.” Mac snarks. He’s defensive, on edge, and he doesn’t want to talk about this. 

“Kiddo, what happened?” He should have known, he can’t hide anything from Jack.

“Dreamed about Murdoc,” He mumbles. “It was him, choking me.”

“I wish I’d shot that bastard when I had the chance,” Jack practically growls. “Stop him from crawling into your head like that.”

Mac swallows. He wishes it was that easy. But Murdoc could be six feet under and the ghosts of his desire would still haunt Mac’s dreams. And he can’t pretend that Murdoc is the only one who sees him that way. Those men today are proof of that.

“I...I went to get some food today. The little corner store.” Mac knows Jack knows the one he’s talking about, that’s where Jack gets them beer every time they have a firepit night. It’s also the one he refuses to get pizza from anymore after that unfortunate food poisoning incident. 

“Oh?” He can tell Jack doesn’t see how these relate.

“Everyone was staring. And it wasn’t so bad when I knew they were judging me or pitying me, but then there were three guys outside.” Mac stops, it feels like he can still smell the smoke and alcohol. “They were drunk, started...um…” He doesn’t want to say it. Doesn’t want to admit that anyone treated him like he was for sale.

“Oh kiddo.” Jack whispers, pulling Mac in against him. “I’m so sorry, Mac.”

“I wish I hadn’t gone,” Mac says. He can’t stop thinking about what he looks like to all of those people now. Because even after the bruises fade, they’re going to remember him. Going to see him as either the pathetic victim of domestic abuse or judge him, thinking he likes someone to treat him very, very rough. And he never, ever wants to see those drunk men again.

“It’s not your fault, Mac,” Jack says gently. “People who look at you like that, it’s their own twisted minds that they should be ashamed of. If that’s the first thing they see, that’s their fault, never yours.”

“I just…”

“Hey. We’ll worry about anything else in the morning. But for now, I’m right here. No one is gonna hurt you. Not them, and not Murdoc. Okay?”

Mac nods carefully, tucking himself into Jack’s arms a little more. He’s comfortable, for once. Jack’s warmth soothes the ache in his muscles, and he seems to instinctively find the angle that’s least painful for Mac’s neck. And this time, when he falls asleep, his dreams aren’t haunted. 

* * *

Mac thinks this is a terrible idea. But Jack is with him, and Jack won't let anything happen to him.

_ Worst case scenario I make a fool of myself and can't show my face in this place again.  _ It's not like he comes here that often. It's no hardship to drive a little further for groceries, and Jack always gets the beer for team nights anyway. 

He tries not to flinch when he hears the whistles. He was sort of hoping those guys wouldn't be there, that he and Jack would have done all this for nothing. 

But the same men are still lounging against the wall. Mac shivers, he wants to ignore what they're saying and let Jack deal with this, but then one of them says something he can't ignore. 

“Oh, is this who left you those? You run home to cry to him?” 

“He's not…” Mac chokes out, sick at the thought that these men assume Jack's done this to him. He feels like they're only making this worse. So much worse.  _ Now they don’t just think I’m someone’s...they think Jack is...they think he… _ He can’t bring himself to let his mind go any further, it’s too awful. 

The men immediately turn their attention to Jack, apparently deciding he's the one with the actual authority. “Got a nice little bitch there,” someone says, and Mac recognizes the guy who followed him to the car yesterday. “You know, you really ought to be a little more careful with letting him out looking like that, if you want him to yourself,” the man chuckles. He smells even more rank than yesterday. 

Jack moves almost faster than Mac can see, and clearly faster than this guy anticipates. Within a fraction of a second, the man is pinned to the wall the way Mac was a week ago, gasping and thrashing. 

“I’m only gonna say this once, so listen to me real good.” Jack’s voice is a dangerous growl. “That is my  _ son _ . And the last guy who laid a hand on him I put six feet under. So unless you want to meet your maker real soon, you leave him alone. Because if you don’t, I will find out about it, and I will find  _ you. _ ” He gives the man a last shake for good measure, and then walks away without looking back as the man slides down the wall, gasping. 

Jack puts his arm around Mac’s shoulder as they walk into the store. “Don’t think he’ll be bothering you again any time soon, kiddo.” 

“Thanks, Jack.” Mac won’t let himself feel embarrassed about Jack stepping in.  _ That’s what family does, they look out for each other. It doesn’t make we weak to accept his help. _

“Anytime, Mac. Any time.” 


End file.
